The native Angeleno Ry Cooder is known for his spare and beautiful guitar work, as well as his spearheading involvement with the Buena Vista Social Club. Now he's brought the same sensitive eye and underdog spirit to "Los Angeles Stories," a collection of loosely linked tales set in Bunker Hill, Chavez Ravine, Venice and Santa Monica. The musician will discuss his stories concerning the everyday people of his city with Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin. Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave. 5 p.m. Sun. (323)

BOOKS In "The Marriage Plot," Jeffrey Eugenides' first novel since 2002's Pulitzer Prize–winning "Middlesex," he examines the lives of three college seniors at Brown University in the '80s. The three characters — Madeleine, an incurable romantic; Leonard, a brilliant but unstable philosopher, and Mitchell, a clear-eyed religious-studies student — find themselves enveloped in a love triangle of sorts that loops in enigmatic professors, feminist theorists, neo-Victorians and concerned mothers.